The Italian Welfare Ministry on Wednesday published a report on immigrant life in Italy.
The study, compiled from several sources, found the following:
NUMBERS
- Over three million foreigners are currently living in Italy
- At least 350,000 of these are here illegally, either having entered without permission or remaining in the country once their permits expired.
NATIONALITY
- Albanians make up the largest immigrant community, accounting for 348,813 of foreign residents.
- Moroccans are next, with 319,537 residents, then Romanians (297,750), Ukrainians (107,118) and Chinese (127,833).
REASONS FOR COMING TO ITALY
- Nearly 63% of foreigners are in Italy for work, while 29.3% came for family reasons.
RELIGION
- Christians make up around half of Italy's foreigners (1.491 million). About 668,000 of these are Catholic, while 659,000 describe themselves as Orthodox.
- Muslims account for a third of foreigners, at 1.009 million.
TAXES
- More than 81% of immigrants holding residency permits pay income tax - around 2.259 million overall.
- In 2004, foreigners paid 1.87 billion euros of income tax on 2.13 billion euros of earnings.
- In 2005, immigrants contributed 86.7 billion euros to Italy's GDP - 6.1% of the total.
PROPERTY AND EDUCATION
- Some 1.2 billion foreigners, 57% of the total, have opened Italian bank accounts,
- Around 560,000 homeowners in Italy are foreign nationals.
- Five percent of kids in Italian schools, 431,000, have foreign parents or were born abroad.
